Dragon Spirit Virtual Console Review
Wii Points: 600 ($6)
Review it yourself
Burning baddies alive as a three-headed dragon in Namco's Dragon Spirit feels like a mixture of cocaine and fuck yeah--for the ten seconds it lasts. An old school shoot-em-up to the core, this TurboGrafx-16 port of a 1987 arcade title dangles the feeling of ultimate power in front of you as you die over and over, just before beating the second level.
It should come as no surprise that this game is difficult, but it is difficult for reasons that make a game less fun. You control Amul, a soldier who is transformed into a blue dragon to rescue a princess (based on a true story). Being a soldier, one would expect Amul to be a quick, muscular guy, but in his dragon form he is more like a pot-bellied elephant with wings: fat as fuck and slow as molasses.
Things get even worse when you start collecting powerups. Blue orbs cause your dragon to sprout up to two extra heads, but they give your weight-challenged wyvern a significant amount of added bulk, so by the time your dragon has three heads, you'll be taking more hits than the chunky kid during phys-ed dodgeball. Though you can take three hits before you die, getting shot removes an extra head each time. In total, you are granted three lives and two continues--assuming you input the "secret code" explained in the manual--to beat the game.
Titles like Panzer Dragoon take an existing genre and skillfully layer on a fat coat of dragonpaint, making for a fairly radical time, but Dragon Spirit has nothing original below the surface. Shoot flying enemies with an air attack, shoot land-based enemies with a bomb attack, get powerups, repeat.
Still, the allure of the game's dragovian aesthetic kept bringing me back for more slow-mo deaths--watching my bloated beast try to roll away from incoming energy balls. Or maybe it was the rather awesome '80s digi-metal that made repeating early levels at least somewhat enjoyable, and nice-looking bosses brought an end to the fairly blandy-bland environments of the level proper.
Bottom line: If you've got a thing for shmups or a passion for dragons, this may be your cup of dreagon tea (that's like tea, but it's a dragon). Otherwise, skip it. Oh, and you're going to need either a GameCube controller or a classic controller to make use of the TurboGrafx-16's turbo buttons. With that hallowed mode enabled, you shoot so much faster it feels like cheating, but you'll forget about that after the 50th restart.
Continue on for Chris Remo's review of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. 2.
